As part of the celebrations marking 150 years since Richard Strauss’s birth, Donald Macleod explores the life and music of the composer.

Strauss was widely celebrated for his operas - the premiere of Salome (1905) was a revolutionary moment for modernism in music - as well as his lieder and orchestral tone poems.

In the first of the week-long series, Macleod introduces some of the important figures who played key roles in Strauss’s burgeoning career, including the conductor Hans von Bülow, who gave Strauss his first conducting post, and, arguably the most influential of all, his wife and distinguished soprano Pauline de Ahna, for whom Strauss wrote more than 200 songs over the course of his career.

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